RE: [idn] alpha v0.4

[Andrew Draper <ADRAPER@altera.com>]

I haven't yet read the draft and so am only replying to this one point.

James Seng wrote:
>    The protocol must only permit characters in labels which is a valid
>    characters in a language. In other word, control sequence, symbols, 
>    punctuation, etc must not be used in label. The exception to this 
>    requirement is '-' (U+002D).
> 
>    Which Paul comment:
>    [[[JAMES: There was not agreement to the above paragraph, and I think
>    that there will be violent disagreement. For example, there are many
>    scripts that have "punctuation" that is used just as often as "-" is
>    used in English. Further, I see no technical reason to exclude symbols
>    from IDN. I propose that you remove the paragraph and bring it up on
>    the list.]]]

I would agree with the spirit of the requirement, but think it is badly
phrased.  My technical reason for excluding symbols would be that allowing
punctuation in DNS names means that we need to spend even more time working
out how to do case folding on it, and thus makes it harder to get a high
quality protocol specified.

There is also a user-friendliness issue.  At the moment someone can guess
a name and type it into their web browser, with a moderate chance of
success.
If arbritary punctuation is allowed then this no longer applies since there
are now many variants of each name.  (Perhaps these could both be solved by
putting in a matching rule which says "all sequences of one or more
punctuation
characters compare equal").

    Andy